Most of the world celebrated Mother’s Day yesterday but here in the country, we have countless stories that tell of the poverty and its attendant challenges faced by a lot of Filipino mothers and how they were helped to endure and overcome such obstacles.
Last week, Metro Cebu was abuzz with news of a maid who threw her baby daughter out the window just after she gave birth in a toilet at a house she worked at in Maria Luisa Subdivision, Cebu City.
The female infant miraculously survived and both mother and daughter were reunited at a hospital. Remorseful over what she did — there are only a few women in her situation who wouldn’t — she decided to care for her child for the meantime.
Ester Concha, chief of Cebu City Hall’s Department of Social Welfare Services (DSWS), said if it were up to her, she wouldn’t file charges against the mother, a maid whose baby’s father is a married man.
The maid has her own children and a common-law partner back in her province of Bohol. As she recounted to reporters, she only remembered giving birth and then blacked out.
The burden of proving her guilt may be difficult without witnesses, as only a jogger named Ariel Pipino and a security guard saw the baby entangled in vines after she was thrown.
Mabolo police said the mother may face charges of frustrated infanticide but that is only if someone would be willing to file a complaint. Concha’s preference may not be a solid guarantee that the mother will escape prosecution but she was right to point out that the baby needs her mother to care for her and she cannot do that in prison.
What spelled the difference was the baby’s miraculous survival and the timely discovery. We only dread to think what would have happened to her if the jogger and the guard didn’t find her in time. It would have spelled her end.
For now she would be cared for by the Cebu City government. The maid has expressed her willingness to return to her hometown though how her common-law partner would deal with her pregnancy is up in the air.
While disposing of her baby may be abhorrent to some, it does bear asking and answering the tough questions of how women can avoid what they would consider to be unwanted pregnancies.
Despite her change of heart, the maid’s initial decision to throw her baby out the window showed that she wasn’t ready to care for her daughter.
Abortion is certainly out of the question in this Catholic dominant country and though there are contraceptives, these are forbidden by the Church and offered as an option to expectant women.
Local government units should reach out more to these indigent women who have experienced unscheduled pregnancies if it means preventing another baby being thrown out the window.